Karl Schlecht Foundation (KSG)

The Karl Schlecht Foundation (KSG) was set up as a non-profit-making foundation under civil law in October 1998. It has its headquarters in Aichtal near Stuttgart and offices in Berlin and Munich.

Following its mission statement, its mission is the improvement of confidence-building leadership in business through our traditional humanistic values and commandments, while respecting the Global Ethic idea and the 5-question test as a code of trust.

The mission statement of KSG is an essential part of KSG governance, which is laid down by the statutes and the founder. It consists of the mission, vision and values catalogue, to be found as SM 170901 and in every KSG activity report.

In 1998, graduate engineer Karl Schlecht transferred 99% of the shares of his company Putzmeister to a charitable foundation. The resulting tax refund of 34 million DM formed the first foundation capital. In the following years, the projects Global Ethic in Tübingen, the Endowed Chair for Wind Energy (SWE) at the University of Stuttgart and the Endowed Chair for Entrepreneurship at the University of Hohenheim were initiated and supported. After overcoming the economic crisis in 2008 and consolidating the company with its own funds, the founder decided to sell all company shares for KSG in the best possible way. After careful consideration, this was done in agreement with the regional council. According to this, the shares of the non-profit KSG Foundation (99%) and the KS Family Foundation (1%) were sold in 2012. This was done on the basis of mutual trust to the private Chinese SANY Group - currently the largest Chinese construction machinery group. To this day, this good trust prevails, based on and thanks to the same value orientation (see also PM/SM 12011).

The foundation is based in the Putzmeister Haus in Aichtal. This is scheduled to be moved to a new building in the area of Stuttgart Airport City in 2023.